


Our Settling Bones

by galimau



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz, John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-05-14 12:19:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19273156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galimau/pseuds/galimau
Summary: Retirement is hard - learning to be a person again is somehow even harder.  Yassen Gregorovich winds up on the doorstep of the one person who managed to get out and almost stay out, and cohabitation is a surreal but rational next step.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh God y'all. This is completely self indulgent, and probably incredibly bizarre.
> 
> If anyone cares about continuity within the respective canons here, I have to admit you're probably barking up the wrong tree. Picks and chooses from AR, particularly Russian Roulette. Only takes JW1 into account, though worldbuilding and background has been pulled from the other movies.

The knock on the door came at the start of normal business hours. Nine in the morning, or very close to it. Sun bright, birds singing, the world for all intents and purposes preparing for a wonderful summer day. Even inside the house things were returning to a kind of order - John had replaced all the sheet glass as soon as the catastrophe with Viggo wound to a close, and the blood stains were mostly out of the wood floors, except for a few places where it had soaked in and warped the wood. Only a little, but just enough that it caught his attention every time he walked down the hallway in bare feet. Tiny variations in texture to remind him of where the bodies laid, while the rest of the house moved on.

The rest of the house but the basement, which John had been avoiding thinking about since he laid his guns to rest. Even six inches of concrete and Helen’s last wishes hadn’t kept his past down, but he liked the assurance of walling it back up.

Dog was in the house, but didn’t so much as bark at the knock on the door. Helen hadn’t given this one a name, and Daisy was in the yard, but John had saved him and so he settled on Dog.

Dog was a lot of things, most importantly sweet and loyal, but he was no type of guardian, which suited John just fine.

He wasn’t expecting trouble, but he wasn’t expecting visitors either so John was cautious as he approached the door.

A good thing too, because on the other side of frosted glass was Yassen Gregorovich, who could only spell trouble even if he was standing politely back from the door, not crowding in and hands carefully visible. Clasped in front of him, fingers interlaced. As close to nonthreatening as anyone of his reputation could be.

John still shifted his balance to be ready for a fight. He didn’t want to do this again. Especially not without shoes on. But he would.

“I wasn’t aware of a hit out on me.”

Gregorovich moved back half a step, face as flat as John remembered from years ago, but kept his hands laced.

“There are none. This is a social call only.”

John squinted at him and said nothing. He didn’t accept social calls from his old friends, and Gregorovich hadn’t even been that. Hadn’t been much of anything really, aside from the ghostly counterpart to John’s own towering reputation. No pictures, no past, no preferred clientele and barely any personality. A track record as a problem-solver as much as an assassin. Not the type of business John preferred to work in, but it meant they were aware of each other.

John didn’t have much use for friends at the moment, not since being friendly got Marcus tortured and shot against his own stairs, but he was good at reading people. And something about Gregorovich’s loose posture, the careful way he was projecting a lack of threat, made John certain that if he swung the door closed he would never hear from him again.

It was that, more than anything, that decided the issue.

John stepped back, held the door open, and invited Gregorovich into his home.

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes later, John had learned more about the other man than he had in almost two decades of working in the same field. These things were that he was quiet, asked for black coffee despite refusing to drink what John prepared, and was deeply patient. Unlike John’s tendency to fight close and dirty, Gregorovich was primarily a sniper and it showed.

It didn’t bother John much. He didn’t have anywhere to be. He just drank his own coffee and waited, hoped that Dog would stay napping in the living room.

The coffee in front of Gregorovich had gone cold by the time he spoke. “You retired.”

John thought about the stains in his hallway and the lock on the basement door and nodded anyways. It had been true for years, and even if it wasn’t true any more, he wanted it to be.

“Yeah. Twice.”

If the reminder that John had killed his way through the New York syndicate of the Russian Mob in order to return to this airy kitchen with its sterile countertops bothered the other man, it didn’t show. Instead he nodded, a short tight motion, and leaned forward in his seat to catch John’s eye. It was the first time they had maintained eye contact for more than a spare second, and John was surprised at how pale his eyes were. He’d expected them to be more blue, somehow.

Gregorovich didn’t change his tone of voice, but he didn’t need to. That he was sitting in John’s kitchen said enough about how serious this must be to him. “I want to retire. If not now, soon. You’re the only person in our line of work I know of that has successfully gotten out.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Small players slipped out of the game all the time: accounts were opened for one year and then never touched again, or people took on fewer and fewer jobs until they faded back to obscurity. That had been impossible for John and might be just as hard for Gregorovich. Maybe more, if he kept to himself as much as rumor would have it.

“And what do you want, help?” John supposed it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that another assassin would want his assistance in clearing out their debts, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. He’d had to tie off a lot of loose strings of his own to get out from under the Table. “If it’s anything like me, it’s not going to be easy. And I don’t clean up people’s messes any more.” He half expected Gregorovich to be offended by the insinuation that he would come crawling for help, but he just looked faintly amused. It was hard to tell, but it was there at the edges. A lack of tension around the eyes.

“I can deal with my own… mess. I’m less sure I can deal with retirement,” he admitted. His voice was very dry.

Out of everything that he could have said, John felt least prepared for that. He sat back and rubbed at his mouth, preoccupied himself with the bristle of his beard where he needed to neaten the edges. It was hard remembering to shave now that he spent most days alone. He’d dealt with retirement just fine, then Helen had died.

And then John hadn’t been retired any more. Now he was again, but he didn’t have anything to make it worthwhile. He took a determined drink of his own coffee and searched for an answer to what wasn’t quite a question. He’d never been very good at talking things through and this was a harder topic than most. John thought about the garden that he needed to replant outside, and going on vacations that didn’t end with someone in a bodybag. Of learning how to bear smaller insults, because not every abrasive asshole in the world was a threat to be put down. About walking through ordinary life making conversation with people you pictured breaking apart with your bare hands, and making the choice to let them go.

It worked until it didn’t.

John wasn’t going to say any of that. Better to keep it simple. “It’s hard.” He waited for more words to come, and when they didn’t he drank more coffee and stared out the window. No birds. There were fewer now that he had Dog.

He could feel Gregorovich watching him, and John wondered what his own face said. Probably nothing good.

The silence resumed. Gregorovich didn’t press for more. Didn’t do much of anything but sit there and watch John or look around the house, not bothering to hide his assessment. John wondered if he should be embarrassed by the chill in the kitchen - no food, plastic fruit in the bowl on the table that someone had dropped off and he’d never bothered getting rid of. Decided just as quickly that if Gregorovich was stretched thin enough to come looking for advice that he probably wasn’t the type to care about an inhospitable home.

There was no actual clock to tick the minutes away, John had neglected to put on his watch, but the green numbers on the microwave inched steadily higher. “Are we done here?” John eventually asked, honestly curious. If Gregorovich said no, then John was getting another cup of coffee.

Instead, Gregorovich nodded easily and slid out from behind the table with familiar grace. It made the hairs on the back of John’s neck stand up, but he pushed down the urge to comment. When John had opened the door he’d seen the suggestion of a gun beneath the layered clothing, knew that he was probably carrying more, and let him in anyways. It wasn’t a concern. This close, John had a good chance of breaking Gregorovich’s arm before getting shot. They were there as a reasonable precaution only. If it came down to a fight, it would be about speed. Knives would be more useful, but Gregorovich might have those too. Probably did, and John was practically naked.

John stood abruptly, collected his empty cup from the table and turned to set it in the sink, forced himself to take the time to rinse it properly. The back of his neck crawled and he forced himself to ignore that, too.

When he turned back around, his guest was watching him through narrowed eyes. Uneasy at the blatant show of either trust or disregard, John couldn’t tell. He didn’t know how to explain that it hadn’t been about Gregorovich at all. That these were the things you tried to do when you were retired.

He moved closer, held out his hand for the untouched cup of coffee still on the table. Still looking vaguely suspicious, Gregorovich handed it over.

John intended to pour it down the sink, but something made him pause. Maybe it was the lingering absurdity from having a visitor appear on his doorstep and linger for an hour in near silence, or how polite Gregorovich was being in a language John hadn’t managed to forget. Maybe it was just that he’d already thought about getting a second cup of coffee and this one was still fresh, if cold.

Instead of dumping it out, John brought it to his mouth and took a long sip. Poison was less of a worry than the gun had been. Sure it was a possibility, but John wasn’t rusty enough to miss someone slipping him something in his own home. And any slight risk was worth the exasperated expression that flashed across Gregorovich’s face. John raised an eyebrow and took a longer drink, just to see if he’d say something.

No dice. His face settled back into careful neutrality, all hints of the earlier sincerity carefully folded away.

“You could stay here,” John offered and immediately wanted to snatch the words back from the air. If this was what happened when he decided to speak, it was good that he kept his mouth shut most of the time. “In the future, if you needed to catch your breath.”

Gregorovich paused, looking honestly surprised for the first time since he appeared on John’s doorstep that morning. He glanced at John and then at the kitchen, turned his head slightly to make an unmistakable sweep of the sprawling living room and hallway with its pictures of happier times.

“I don’t like your house,” he said.

Which really was the least of all possible objections, but one that still stung John’s pride. Helen had loved it here, with the light and clean air from the windows. She’d liked having her friends over, being able to lean over the second floor balcony and call down to John, said the spiral staircase made it feel like a modern castle.

John liked the house because it had good lines of sight and held its silence well. He could sit quietly and listen to people moving through his home, and knew that most every room had at least two entrances. It didn’t feel like a castle, but neither did it make him feel trapped.

“It’s an offer. Your choice,” John said and walked with him to the door. As strange as this entire visit had been, it was over. Whatever sense of companionship they’d had at the table faded fast.

Gregorovich left.

But two months later, he came back.

 

* * *

 

The two of them eased into a tense coexistence that mostly relied on how little they saw each other. It was nothing at all like sharing a home with Helen.

Rather than any of the guest bedrooms downstairs, Yassen claimed a room on the second floor of the house, down the hall from the master bedroom. It had been an office, and then turned into makeshift living quarters once Helen got sick enough that a constant stream of visitors filtered through their lives, bearing lasagna and well wishes and grating on John’s last nerves. It was small and plain, but John suspected that the appeal for Yassen was the tiny balcony. Hard to approach and easy to escape from, John liked the position of his own bedroom for much the same reason.

It was things like that that made living together strange. It was hard to forget that Yassen was a threat when so many of the things he did reminded John of himself. Unlike Helen, he never shouted to get John’s attention or stomped down the stairs when he realized he had forgotten a cup of water or the book he was reading. He wasn’t forgetful in the first place, and beyond that he moved as quietly as John did. It was impossible to lay still and trace Yassen’s movements around his home, but John thought the house felt warmer with another person in it anyways.

At least having a guest kept him alert, made it less likely that he would forget to shave or change out of his sleepwear until halfway through the day. It was less often now that he found himself making a bowl of cereal and waiting to eat it, only to realize long minutes later that no one was coming to eat breakfast with him. He usually dumped the mess of soggy bran flakes down the garbage disposal those days.

Yassen woke before he did and went to bed after he did, so John was never completely sure when he slept. But in the morning there was always a rinsed mug in the right half of the sink, and a hot pot of coffee. Soon after Yassen moved in, John also started finding the newspaper folded in front of his usual chair at the kitchen table. Yassen may have been a ghost in the house but he was an observant one, and he certainly gave off the impression of being the type of person who would wait for the newspaper to arrive before the sun was up.

The paper kept appearing for a week, always neat and orderly, only the absence of advertisement pages to show that it had been read through. On the eighth day that John walked downstairs to a pot of coffee and the morning paper, he sought Yassen out.

He was on the back patio, stretching with the deliberate motions that spoke of long steady practice. John knew he ran every day because when he woke at six, he usually saw Yassen returning through the front entrance of the yard, before hearing the guest shower turn on.

John watched him stretch for a minute, admiring the precise form, and stepped out to greet him. When the back door clicked open Yassen stilled, focusing immediately on John. He never looked wary the way that John was used to, but Yassen never seemed relaxed either. Part of him hoped that it was just a personality trait, rather than tension from being so close to ‘John Wick’. John was tired of being dangerous.

“Thanks for setting out the paper and coffee,” John said. It cost nothing to be polite, especially with the man he had invited into his home. Even if it had been an impulsive offer, it hadn’t worked out badly so far. So until Yassen left, John could afford to acknowledge when the man made an effort.

“You’re welcome,” Yassen replied. Beneath the usual cool tone, John was sure he heard a hint of surprise. Common courtesy was an usual occurrence, given their line of work. And setting that aside entirely, John felt sure that Yassen had very few associates he was on good terms with. His personality didn’t lend itself to making friends, but John didn’t mind.

Which in itself was odd, since John typically minded everyone.

Yassen was still staring at him, expression shifting towards irritation the longer they stood there.

“Was that all?”

John nodded at him, suddenly feeling off-kilter, and retreated inside.

Days slipped by without commemoration. If it weren’t for the drone of the news every night to mark the passage of time, they might have blurred together entirely. John stayed out of the house as much as he could, aimlessly shopping for groceries he lacked the enthusiasm to cook or walking Dog until Dog made the determination to return home.

Yassen took to cleaning the house with a soft cloth and bleach wipes. John had offered to call the cleaners that they used in the past, and the scathing look he got in response said enough. Protesting that they only cleaned the common areas and that being retired meant relaxing the typical paranoia that kept professional killers alive had been an argument John lost to Helen, but wasn’t one he had the energy to fight with Gregorovich. So he left Yassen to attend to the dust and fingerprints that collected on all the sleek surfaces, and spent his own time trying to sand the floorboards down to even order, and wondering if he should stain them darker. They seemed tinted red, even though he knew it was his imagination. Blood dried brown.

Bringing the floor back to normal took was a longer project than the daily ritual keeping the house clean, but somehow John felt like he was lagging behind his new housemate’s singular focus.

He needed a project. Projects were good, and stopped him from spending too much time getting lost in his own head, or staring at Yassen’s deliberate track through his home for lack of anything better to do. That was a singularly unproductive hobby because Yassen had a habit of vanishing between heartbeats if John stared for too long. It was irritating; John was used to being the only danger lurking in his house.

A car would do it - something else to fix. He could buy one, but maybe a trip to see Aurelio was in order. Nothing perfect, just something to keep him busy.

“What was her name?”

John looked up from his notebook where he’d been jotting notes in an indecipherable shorthand. Yassen was looking at the pictures on the display shelf as if he’d never seen them before, or as if it had just occurred to him that he was sharing a house with one of the smiling people in the frame. Some of John’s favorites were there, but nothing too special. None of the ones that would have hurt to have in the public eye.

Had he really never spoken about her to Yassen? It seemed laughable, but the longer John thought about it the more his stomach clenched. No, he and Yassen didn’t speak much but surely she’d come up between them. His wife, Helen, who liked daisies and the beach when the weather was cold and thought their home was her castle. Whose things were still on the other half of the bathroom. Her memory was laced so deeply into the bones of his home John had forgotten that someone else could live here and never know.

“Helen. Her name was Helen.”

Yassen snatched his hand back from where he had touched the corner of the frame as if it stung him.

“Helen,” he repeated, flatly.

His voice didn’t sound right. Too calm for the way the line of his body was coiling defensively. John slid his notebook to the side and stood, careful not to make any sharp movements. If something was about to go wrong, then he was going to be ready for it. And if Yassen didn’t step away from his photographs while he was broadcasting violence, then something was going to go very, very wrong.

“That a problem?”

Yassen flicked his eyes toward John, pale blue and more tired than John would have expected. Not hostile, just wound tight. It wasn’t fragility, but it was far enough from aggression to make John halt his approach. They’d been living in a friendly enough truce for almost a month now. He didn’t want to be the one to break it if he didn’t have to.

“John and Helen. It’s almost funny,” Yassen said with an air of finality, explaining precisely nothing. And then without saying anything else at all, he walked out of the living room. A moment later, John heard the back door open and shut.

A rarity in their house. Whatever had just happened, Yassen wanted him to know that he was gone. John couldn’t resent that, still trying to soothe his own nerves from the near-confrontation.

He headed to the shelf, wondering what exactly had set the other man off. There were no intimate pictures here, not of Helen’s wide open smile when he’d caught her by surprise or his eyes slipping shut with laughter. Those records of unguarded moments John was careful to keep safe. These were pretty pictures, but just that. From vacations, mostly. Rome, Paris. Places that thousands of people had pictures of, and unremarkable because of that.

John looked at them for a long time and then carefully set them back into place and returned to his notes.

Yassen would be back. He was a law unto himself at the best of times, but he’d been nothing but polite so far. Running out in the middle of the night didn’t seem like the man John was haltingly coming to know. Besides, he still had most of his weapons here. Not bricked up like John’s but politely out of sight around the house.

He’d be back, and they wouldn’t talk about it, and things would ease their way back to normal until it came time for him to leave permanently.

John stared down at his notebook, discovered that his shorthand was getting hard for even himself to understand, and snapped it closed.

It was time to turn in for the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is introspection, and oatmeal.

It started with oatmeal. 

Yassen woke comfortably before five every morning, put the coffee on and waited for the morning paper to be delivered, read the news over breakfast - usually a second portion of whatever he’d eaten the night before, as a rule nutritious and bland. He cleaned behind him and removed himself to exercise and study whatever had caught his eye for the day. Wick emerged from his room at half past, drank the coffee and read the paper, and they lived their separate lives.

Yassen shopped for himself, and mostly kept the peace by taking up as little space in Wick’s house as possible. Any food he ate that belonged to Wick, he made sure to compensate him for, with neat piles of cash left on the kitchen island and a precise accounting of market cost on the notepad beside it. That it was unlikely Wick would have noticed the missing food wasn’t the point - the idea of charity rankled. 

The money and notes always vanished, and nothing was ever said. 

That state of affairs might have continued indefinitely if Yassen hadn’t gotten it into his head to clean out the kitchen. There had been too many mornings that he woke up to the smell of slowly spoiling food in the back of the refrigerator while Wick continued to dine on dry cereal and preserved fruits from the cupboard or reserves of other meals. Last he checked, there were still two lasagnas marked with ‘condolences’ in arched script in the freezer, but those would run out. You couldn’t survive off a funeral for long. 

Dealing with the food situation was something he’d put off for as long as he could stand.

He’d already devoted himself to cleaning the house, and Wick hadn’t minded, just went about his own business or made repairs to his car in the garage. Existing quietly in the same space, breathing the same air. 

Scouring the kitchen felt… different. More permanent. It wasn’t any of his business if Wick let his groceries rot or ate out when he ran his errands or collapsed from hunger one day. It was just frustrating to see such a capable and dangerous man listless with a type of grief Yassen couldn’t touch and hardly understood. It made him feel ineffective, and like he was an intruder into Wick’s life rather than a guest.

Guests didn’t throw out the rotting cabbage at the back of the fridge.

Mulling over his urge to assert some order on the food in this home, Yassen ran a critical finger over the countertops - marble. Speckled with black and grey, and glossy enough to make it clear that they were hardly used. The stovetop was collecting dust near the knobs - that little bit of grime that even experienced house cleaners always missed. There was a small scratch near the back corner, tiny and barely noticeable. Someone had attempted to scour the delicate surface clean. Yassen wondered if it had been while Wick’s wife - Helen - was alive. 

This was a kitchen that had been designed to be cooked in, a house built for entertainment and company, now haunted by Wick and his dog. The dog was persistently affectionate toward Yassen despite his indifference toward the animal, and whenever Wick was out the dog followed Yassen from room to room, watching him clean with clear brown eyes and leaving a trail of more work in damp nose-prints and smatterings of grey fur. 

Dog was laying in the corner now, moping after John vanished to the city for the day. He’d left in the morning and now, as night was closing in, he still hadn’t returned. Every time Yassen glanced his direction, Dog’s tail would wag a few hopeful times. Wanting attention or to go on a walk, Yassen wasn’t sure. Neither of them sounded appealing. He’d let Dog outside earlier and that was the most he was willing to do for the animal. 

Wick could take care of it when he returned.

Idly, one eye on the time, Yassen dried the plate from his evening meal and replaced it in the cabinet. The fridge droned quietly behind him.

It was one thing to wipe down countertops and sweep away the ever-present collection of hair that wanted to collect on the floorboards. Mostly canine, though Yassen had noticed more than a few of Wick’s long strands mingled in with the dust over the past weeks.

He really did keep his hair at an appalling length for someone who favored close combat. 

Yassen didn’t know if it was arrogance or a well-warranted proclamation of his skill. ‘Try to get close.’

Some days, with restless energy coiled under his skin that exercise couldn’t quell, Yassen pictured wrapping his fingers in the thick strands, grabbing hold tightly, and slamming Wick’s face into the metal bars that ringed the staircase until something gave. That was usually about the time that he excused himself to his room to meditate, or slipped outside for a second run

He was relatively sure that it wasn’t even anger. 

Just the restless energy of boredom that had no outlet and no end in sight. Physical labor could only do so much, and even held to Yassen’s standards, a house could only be so clean. He had no particular love of gardening or cars, so he left those to Wick. 

Balancing his day against the preferences of another person was odd enough without attempting to share interests.

Whenever he’d imagined retirement it had been one that was spent resolutely alone. A house in St. Petersburg, a variety of bolt-holes across the world that no one knew about but him. Laying low in the house of another notorious (former) assassin was so far removed from his plans or any predictions that it sounded like a joke. Which was part of why, after politely indicating that he was retiring after all, and then having to drive the point home when SCORPIA objected to his plans, Yassen decided that taking Wick up on his offer was a reasonable course of action. 

Those who spend their time killing others for money tended to be the type of people who enjoyed solitude and firm boundaries, and Yassen had a more solitary reputation than most. He doubted even his former employers would think to look for him in the shadow of John Wick, and that degree of safety made cohabitation palatable. That most of the world seemed determined to ignore Wick after the rampage he went on after the death of his wife was a stroke of luck Yassen hadn’t predicted. It was… nice, to have that additional security. 

Even if the house had been designed to grate across his last nerve. He’d been honest that first day when he told Wick that he didn’t care for his home. Retired or not, this many windows on the ground floor was just inviting trouble. There was a long string of clients in his past he’d advised away from just that mistake.

Visuals were good. Exposing yourself was not. Despite assurances that the glass was bulletproof, this felt like tempting trouble. The indisputable fact that the other man was one of the few people in the world whose reputation acted as enough of a safeguard against all but the most idiotic of threats was a pale reassurance; men with no sense of self preservation and deep grudges were depressingly common in their world. Wick trusted the common sense of his enemies too much. The affair with the Russian mob had proven that. But Wick wasn’t in the habit of asking his professional opinion, and Yassen wasn’t going to start offering it. 

Paranoia was useful for any assassin - it kept you alive and on your toes, ahead of the law and the competition. Yassen hadn’t understood when Wick first told him just how deeply the precautions that kept you alive while you were working could poison any attempt at building a life. Months later, it was beginning to feel obvious.

While remaining in one place left him feeling vulnerable, the thought of leaving for another location smacked too much of running away. And in quieter moments, when Yassen measured his breathes in and out, meditating in the place of sleep, he felt a raw animal certainty in his bones that if he started running he would never stop. Yassen was quickly coming up on the age where that was a death sentence. 

There were noble reasons to leave their line of work behind. A tired conscience, hatred of the job, wanting to find a blank slate. Wick had left because of love, which was stereotypical enough to be almost charming.

He’d never trusted noble urges, but under all the hypocritical bluster of morality was the sad truth that at least those reasons gave you something to cling to. 

Practicality was what drove him to retire: preserving his own legacy at the peak of his career to ensure he was respected and untouchable, and the acknowledgement that age was dogging his steps. 

A perfectly fine reason, one that anyone in their world would accept as a grim reality. It just wasn’t completely true.

What Yassen knew and would never admit to was he’d been chasing freedom. That for the first time in his life he’d be his own person, accountable to no one else. Not the Board or a client or an owner. 

Four months after retiring and biting his sense of calm between his teeth for fear of it slipping away, Yassen felt like he should have expected getting his freedom to feel like a smack in the face. 

The first days he spent in this odd house with odder company, Yassen expected every morning that he would be asked politely to leave, or for Wick to abandon good manners and try to smother him in his sleep. Instead the man had continuously made room for him in his home and in his life. It was a degree of courtesy that Yassen still had trouble accepting. He’d learned young that there was a sting in any kindness, and the seemingly genuine offer of rest and companionship was enough to set his teeth on end. He wanted it to be real, and hated the vulnerability that came with wanting. 

If there was a solution to the problem of retirement, he hadn't found it yet. 

Yassen blinked his eyes open without knowing when he'd pressed them shut. There was a headache scraping away behind his eyes, and a sharp ache in his hand. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dog pick up his head and stare. Carefully, Yassen released his hold on the countertop, flexing his fingers as blood rushed back to his knuckles. He wanted to hit something, but settled for breathing carefully, focused on the expansion of his lungs. Combat breath. In four, hold four, out four. 

The question of Wick was baffling enough on a good day. Tonight was not one. Yassen put his host out of his mind, and refocused. 

If Wick objected to losing his rotting groceries, then he would have plenty of opportunity to say so. 

* * *

 

The next morning Yassen woke at five to a very dreary world. The sky had opened up some time in the night and the storm was showing no signs of letting up - the water pelting against the windows was loud enough to drown out the sounds of the sleeping house, and fell in sheets thick enough to reduce the world outside to a dark smear of rain and pre-dawn gloom. Yassen sat on his bed and listened to it rattle the balcony doors in his room, deeply reluctant to move.

He had pushed through worse more times than he could count while working or keeping himself fit. But right now, undeniably awake but warm and dry, Yassen acknowledged that he didn’t particularly want to push through the thunderstorm. It was just as practical to go later in the day when it was dry and light outside. 

He did, however, want coffee and the morning paper, whenever it eventually arrived. 

Yassen pulled his blankets back to order and padded down the hallway, feeling irrationally pleased with his decision to remain indoors. The good mood carried him through the morning preparations he’d learned well enough to do in the dim glow of the stove light. Filling the carafe, measuring the grounds, waiting for the burble of the coffee brewing to die down as he sat silently at the kitchen island and mapped out the day ahead. 

Normally he would be moving quickly, eating whatever he had on-hand that was light so he could be out the door. Today it would have been a second portion of roasted chicken breast with rice and raw diced cabbage - his meal the night before. 

He’d been taught to cook, and cook well - everything from fine dining to what flavors would best mask common poisons and how to trigger a deadly reaction when a target had a convenient food allergy. And still, when he was on his own, Yassen defaulted to what was fast and nutritious, paying little attention to taste. 

Now, with the morning spinning on without any self-imposed deadline, the idea of nursing a meal from preparation to plate was an appealing one. And if he was content with the job he’d done yesterday, knowing that the kitchen was in order for once, no one needed to know that.

Coffee in hand, he began. 

The container of steel-cut oats was the first thing he set out, eyeing the dust collecting on the top with no small amount of judgement. The next was the heavy cream from the door of the fridge - opened and still nearly full, almost at the end of its life. He’d narrowly spared it in the purge yesterday. They both took their coffee black and he hadn’t seen any evidence of guests in his time here, so Yassen accepted the vague bafflement at Wick’s habits that had become his new normal and set it on the island as well. 

High quality spices in their rack were picked through, cinnamon and nutmeg and a bottle of vanilla extract with the bean still inside it. 

In the bottom of the fridge there was a forgotten container of walnuts, half opened and sealed inside a plastic bag to stop them from going rancid. 

Yassen measured the oats and water and set the pot to a simmer. As soon as the first wisps of steam rose up from the pot he added a long pour of cream and a dash of salt. The nuts he chopped with little fuss - whatever other complaints Yassen had about the kitchen, Wick kept his knives lethally sharp. 

Between each step, he sipped his coffee. 

Fresh fruit would have been nice. To mix in or spread on top of the bowl. On the table, the bowl of fake fruit gleamed in the low light and Yassen resolved that that would be the next to be thrown out. It was pointless rather than a health hazard, so he hadn’t paid it any mind yesterday, but nearing six in the morning and preparing breakfast, the sight of wax apples grated. 

The persistent murk outside may have had something to do with the way night lingered too-long into the morning, but Wick beat the sunup. Dog beat him downstairs and was the first announcement that Yassen was being joined by company. He tolerated Dog’s overjoyed affection at finding another person awake and in the house and kept stirring the oatmeal. He refused to be set off-balance by being caught cooking. Wick had to know that Yassen had been sustaining himself in his house for the last month. This was almost no different than that.

The light in the kitchen would have given him away, and Wick didn’t bother pretending at surprise to find him there. Confused, perhaps. 

“You’re making breakfast,” said Wick, a touch flat.

Yassen considered the oats in front of him, the jar of honey sitting in hot water to be rid of crystals in the sink and didn’t respond.

“There’s coffee,” he said instead. 

Wick shoved his hand through his mess of hair, pushing it back from dark eyes to keep staring at Yassen. He didn’t look any less confused than he had a moment ago, but he did move forward to pour himself a cup before retreating to the kitchen table. He held his mug with both hands and kept looking around the kitchen as if he suspected that Yassen had moved everything very slightly off-kilter in the middle of the night. 

Since all Yassen had done was clean the place down to the grout and emptied out his food, Wick was in for a disappointment. 

“It’s storming pretty hard out there,” was Wick’s next contribution, as nonsensical as the last. One of his hands floated down to rub Dog’s ears, who had returned to his side after Yassen refused to pet him. 

Offering a hum of acknowledgement that Wick had spoken, Yassen added a capful of vanilla to the oatmeal. It was almost finished. The oats had taken on a creamy consistency and a plump shine as they cooked, and the steam coming up from the pot carried the distinct smell of spices. Using the back of the knife, he pushed the small mountain of diced walnuts into the oats and stirred a few more times, until the scent warmed to a distinctive nuttiness. 

The honey could be spooned on top, as much or little as Wick wanted.

Wick, who was still watching Yassen with a level focus that prickled against the back of his neck. Before, whenever that attention settled too heavily on him, Yassen had made it a point to slip away. 

“Would you like some?” He asked instead. If avoiding Wick’s assessing stare was impossible, then redirecting his attention was always a passable second.

From the corner of his eye, he saw John smile. “Yes,” he paused as manners resurrected themselves, “please.” Coffee abandoned for the moment; Wick approached the stove. The implicit five-foot radius they maintained bowed inwards and broke when John reached over his shoulder to pull the honey out of the sink. Maybe it was the early hour, or the way the rain on the windows hemmed them in together, or even that it was difficult to be as careful as they should with the smell of vanilla and cinnamon in the air, but Yassen found that he didn’t mind the intrusion as much as he expected. 

Odd. 

Yassen ladled out a haphazard portion and set the bowl on the counter between them. The few seconds that it took suddenly felt very necessary to keep his equilibrium. Which, of course, Wick immediately shattered.

“Eat with me?” He addressed the question directly, watching Yassen with a level focus that said he was willing to accept either answer and say nothing more about it if Yassen declined. That forthrightness was an appealing and rare quality, one that Yassen respected. He also disliked having it directed toward him.

It wasn’t the first time that Wick had sought out his company, but it very well could have been the first time it was requested. Despite his best efforts, some confusion must have shown on his face, because Wick gave a short noise and expanded upon his question.

“We usually ate together in the mornings. The company was nice. She woke up slowly and always said that it helped to have someone to talk to.” As he explained, Wick stirred a long ribbon of honey into his bowl. He didn’t sound upset at the mention of his wife, not exactly. Mostly blank. Yassen could sympathize. He’d never lost anyone like Wick had - never had anyone to lose, not really - but emotions were hard enough to give form to under the best of circumstances. 

“It sounds peaceful.” Yassen could picture it - Helen, the woman who laughed from picture frames across the house, who liked a large kitchen and room to entertain guests. Her coffee mug was still out in the kitchen, light green with a daisy pressed into the ceramic. It was one of the few things that Yassen had been careful not to touch as he cleaned the cabinets out. 

“It was.” 

Yassen watched him sample the oatmeal, just tasting the tip of his spoon where it had dipped into the bowl. Apparently, Wick had a sweet tooth, because he added another long pour of honey to his breakfast. When he was done, he glanced at Yassen, one dark eye glinting through the curtain of hair hanging in his face, and left the top off before returning to the table. 

...it would be absurd to make breakfast for the both of them and then insist on eating alone. 

Yassen filled his own bowl quickly, not giving any time for second guesses to make themselves known and added his own (much more reasonable) amount of honey to the oats. If he gave himself too much time to wonder about John’s motivations or whether this was setting unsettling precedent, there was every chance that he would abort this attempt at friendliness. 

As soon as he sat down, Wick began eating. The quiet realization that he had been waiting for Yassen to join him at the table itched under his skin, distracting enough that Yassen was left staring, trying again to understand his host. 

“It tastes good.”

Yassen tried a bite and was pleased to find that Wick was correct. It was far from the most complicated thing that he’d ever cooked, but there was an art to making the oats supple without letting them slip into amorphous slop. The slivers of walnut made a pleasant complement to the texture, and the spices tasted of the oncoming fall. It was the best thing he’d made himself in a long time, and that John enjoyed it made the meal more satisfying. 

Wishing again that he’d had fresh fruit to add, or even a tart apple to chop into the oats, Yassen refused to linger on that revelation.

Their meal continued in silence, punctuated by the snuffle of Dog around their chairs as he searched for scraps, until Wick pushed his bowl aside.

“I’m getting more coffee. Want some?”

“Yes, please. My cup is-”

“You left it by the stove.”

Yassen had. 

He kept eating, wondering when the morning had gotten so far from his expectations. It would be too easy to blame the breakfast - Yassen was sure that indulging his urge to stay dry was at the root of the issue. And now he was getting his coffee fetched while he shared a meal with Wick, both of them barefoot and in sleep clothes. 

He hadn’t dreamt in over a decade, but there was a distinctly surreal note to the morning. Outside, the watery smear of the yard had lightened to a grey haze. It wasn’t quite seven yet, and the trees around the property vanished into the distance. 

Yassen accepted his coffee cup, now full and steaming. If he died horribly from poison now, he probably deserved it. 

Wick settled back into his seat and took a long draught of his coffee, looking distinctly more awake with food and caffeine in him. More like he was also realizing how strange the entire thing was, but far from displeased. A few more bites of oatmeal vanished with determination until the bowl in front of Wick was empty and that same satisfaction was trying to swell again beneath Yassen’s ribs.

“If you like cooking, just tell me what you want and I’ll get it from the store,” Wick said as he cleared his bowl. He didn’t reach for Yassen’s, even though it was almost empty. Whether that was manners or if Wick had an inborn respect for others’ food, Yassen didn’t know enough about his past to say. “You don’t need to pay me.”

Just as Yassen was about to bridle at the implication that he accept charity - beyond his stay here in total - Wick continued.

“If you’re cooking for the both of us, that’s enough. Just write down your list.” He set his bowl in the sink and turned toward the pantry to grab the dog food, filling the bowl with an unnecessary rattle to get Dog’s attention. Dog, by virtue of his nature, was already at his feet and watching John intently. “Has the paper come yet?”

“I assume so, but haven’t checked.”

He’d been more occupied than usual. It was likely ruined from the water, if it had come on time.

John nodded and headed down the hall toward the front door, leaving Yassen to the last of his breakfast. His appetite had deserted him though, and he scraped the last of his bowl into the trash before packing the rest into the fridge. 

He wasn’t entirely sure if he did like cooking. It was something he was acceptable at, and a practical way to fill the time. It had been a neat solution to his boredom that morning and the kitchen had been cleaned more out of self-preservation than any real enjoyment. But it wasn’t as if he actively disliked it either.

And seeing Wick finally eating a meal rather than the cobbled remains of several meals had been pleasant, for reasons he didn’t want to understand or examine. 

...and he had wanted some fresh fruit.

On the pad of paper he usually recorded the cost of the groceries he used, Yassen scrawled ‘apples’. On further consideration he added ‘eggs - good quality’.

When he finished rinsing the dishes and returned upstairs to prepare for the day, tension pressed against his skull. This felt like he had managed to expose himself more than sitting next to those damn windows did, and it left Yassen irritated at himself and Wick for offering in the first place. 

But he’d left the attempt at a list downstairs. 

He’d even, Yassen noted with exasperation, brought the fresh cup of coffee up with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The minor thesis of this fic is: food as healing, so I have zero guilt about indulging in 2000 words about oatmeal. (Well, maybe a little bit of guilt.) 
> 
> Let me know if you liked anything, or really hate oatmeal, as one of my friends does. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yassen and the unpleasant reminder that the world is larger than just John's kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes to you belatedly but with a lot of love for everyone who's read this over the past few months - it means more than you know that you'd stop by and read. 
> 
> Originally this chapter was much longer and got split in half - the other should be up soon (for once!).

Reputation was the backbone of society. 

The name you made for yourself that carried a career and a life, that gave others something to judge you by. It could make or break you, and was particularly valuable currency when so many people with such important opinions were crowded into close quarters the way they were in the upper-echelons of Newark. 

Elaine and Derek had lived in the neighborhood for long years when a young couple bought the lot across the street. They lived a comfortable life, but one that made any change to the world around them something to remark upon. Two kids graduated from St.John's prep and starting their own lives meant that Elain and Derek had no inclination to move after the economy tanked; the neighborhood was good enough and quiet enough to be a decent place to call home. Naturally, they had a vested interest in making sure it stayed that way.

Good green spaces to walk and ride bikes. Monitoring the zoning decisions nearby to make sure that anything commercial had to abide by certain aesthetic standards. Nice neighbors, the type of people who could be counted on to throw good holiday parties and make conversation as they went about their days. And for the most part, Elaine knew that they had gotten their wish.

It was a diverse neighborhood only in the sense that many different careers were represented. Plenty of financial analysts who worked across the river explaining why things had gone so wrong, doctors and lawyers who always kept busy no matter what the stock market was doing. Derek was one of them - a leading orthopedic surgeon who opened his doors at four in the morning, closed them at two in the afternoon even as close to retirement as he was. It meant Elaine spent a lot of mornings alone, which was how she liked it. Being the chair of a charitable board that did enough to stay funded but was far enough from a nine to five that she had the time to go about her own business in the mornings and be home in the afternoons. When the kids were around, she met them after school and had never changed her habits once they left.

That was how, years ago, Elaine became the first person to meet Helen Wick. 

It had been the talk of the street for ages - the house and landscape remodeled before anyone had caught sight of the new owners. Sturdy fencing added in, thick-boughed trees studded around the property line until catching a glimpse of the million-dollar home was impossible. The whole thing had an air of intrigue for a neighborhood that hadn’t changed much over the years. 

The question of who the new neighbors could be, and more importantly what they were like, was the talk of the town. 

It was only because Elaine made a habit of taking her breakfast on the porch that she noticed it when - rather than moving vans or construction equipment - a sleek sedan pulled to the side of the road with a sleek young woman getting out of the driver’s side, carrying a case of notes and walking up the driveway with purpose. Elaine watched her for a long moment, thought hard, and then got busy. By the time that the mysterious woman came back down the drive, fishing for keys in her purse and looking satisfied with whatever she’d seen of the house, Elaine had pulled on a more acceptable outfit for meeting new neighbors and gone to say hello.

An hour later, she’d bundled Helen into her empty kitchen, bemoaning her empty nest and Derek’s busy schedule, learning everything she could about her new neighbors.

Helen turned out to be a bright, social creature who made a habit of inviting everyone into her home, for parties or even late-night conversations on the occasions when what you really needed was a glass of wine and a sympathetic ear. An esteemed photographer with an eye for art and a better eye for people, she was immediately popular and seemed to flourish in the welcoming attention of their tiny community.

Her husband, a grim-faced scarecrow of a man who was apparently retired from a career neither of them spoke much about, made no sense as her match.

John Wick was dour and unsociable and if he had a certain dangerous charisma, that was even worse because it meant he was likely up to no good. 

Helen loved him and Elaine had supposed that was all that mattered. Wherever his money came from, he could afford to keep them in style as she worked and even the most skeptical of their friends could tell that John was devoted to his wife. 

It was just less clear why she was devoted to him in return.

As the next years went by and things stayed the same, landing on an easy sort of consistency where everyone hemmed and hawed and Helen cheerfully ignored all their doubts, some of the resistance to John faded. Despite his self-imposed solitude, the men on the street opened their grills to him, and talked cars, and entertained whatever rituals made the world go round. Life might have settled down completely if it weren’t for a rumor that began to spread, slowly but surely among their peers. No one seemed to have any details, it was all traded on ‘a friend of a friend once heard-’. But Derek came back shaken from dinner with a few well-connected clients, and Stacy, who was old money and the daughter of a congressman, refused to speak to Wick from the start.

People began to talk.

About just where all that money had come from.

And why John Wick never spoke much about his past.

The invitations and jokes dried up, and Elaine always meant to corner Helen, to give her fair warning about the type of man she was married to. Over cocktail hour everyone seemed to agree that it was impossible that she knew, or at least knew all of it.

But the best of intentions only went so far, and cancer took Helen before anyone could say anything, and the whole neighborhood gathered around to watch grim-faced John Wick bury his better half. 

And maybe that was an omen, because not two days later there were gunshots, and screams in the middle of the night, and police who couldn’t do anything. John came back and settled into his beautiful home and didn’t come out, and the street held its breath. 

Everyone was still in that careful hush months later when, against all the odds, someone new appeared. 

Attractive and quiet and with no one very sure of when exactly he’d begun living with John Wick, only that he appeared at odd hours of the day. More than once Derek reported that he’d seen the strange man as he departed for work just before three in the morning, while Sandy in book club said that he was clearly a night owl from when she caught sight of him in a ghostly grocery store at midnight. All that anyone could agree on was that he was impossible to pin down, polite, and in way over his head with Wick.

What no one quite knew, however, was what (if anything) should be done about it.

She hadn’t found the opportunity to speak to the new mystery neighbor over the past few months. Occasionally Elaine would see him walking a dog _(their dog?)_ down the sidewalk at a more sedate pace, looking as neatly put together as anyone she could have hoped her daughter would bring home. Most of the time she saw him just as she got up in the morning, already coming back from a run.

As many of her friends had noted, he seemed quite dedicated to keeping fit. 

So when Elaine spotted their new maybe-neighbor at the little corner store that most of them ended up frequenting for vital provisions without having to go all the way into town, she knew she had to say something. He looked young enough to be a nephew, if not quite her child. 

Today, he was in casual clothing rather than anything athletic, succumbing to the chill in the air only enough to don a high-necked sweater, rather than the layers that Elaine had wrapped herself in before leaving the house that morning. Old bones, she supposed. You felt everything that much more.

It was an uncertain thing, staging an intervention for someone you didn’t know.

She dropped the puffed rice crackers and tin of green-tea mints into her cloth carrybag and made her way to where he was comparing two bags of coffee. Watching him, Elaine could have sworn he was oblivious to everything but the merits of fair trade as opposed to single-source beans, but he didn’t bat an eyelash when she moved to his side to peer at his selections.

“We usually get ours from the Starbucks, to be honest. But I don’t think you can go wrong with anything here.” It was the type of store specifically meant to ensure that you paid for the privilege of accessible quality, but well worth it. Elaine had pulled together a spread for book club more times than she could count out of their bakery case. “I don’t think we’ve met properly so I had to come say hi,” she finished with her best social smile. If he was shy or simply quiet, she’d gladly supply the personality for the conversation.

He put both bags back onto the shelf and turned to give her his full attention. It was, Elaine was a bit surprised to find, a very considerable amount of attention to reckon with. Somehow she hadn’t expected someone who she mostly knew through his exercise habits and fashion choices to have quite so clear a stare.

Her smile didn’t waver, and she extended the hand not holding onto her groceries. “I’m Elaine. We live across the street.”

He clasped her hand just long enough to be polite. With all the approval of someone who spent a lot of time at the salon, Elaine noted his nails were neatly trimmed and clean. Good skin too - if she’d been twenty years younger, she’d have been jealous. 

“Yakov. I’ve seen you out - I should have stopped to say hello before.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’re the newcomer, it’s on us to make the first move.”

His responding smile crinkled the corner of his eyes and warmed his entire face. Yakov wasn’t what anyone would describe as hard to look at, but the smile chased away the unexpected intensity from earlier. Elaine grinned back at him, and actually meant it this time.

“That’s an unusual name, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“It’s russian.”

“You don’t have much of a russian accent.” His voice was, if anything, blandly mid-Atlantic.

Shrugging philosophically, Yakov reached again for the coffee on the shelf. If his smile had turned a tad rueful at the observation, it was hard to blame him.

“I was educated in Europe. I’m afraid most of my accent is gone by now, unless you catch me very early in the morning.”

She gave an understanding hum. It was always a shame when that happened - accents could be beautiful things, so long as they didn’t get in the way of your career. Very cultured. She’d sent her children to a school with a strong international exchange program for that reason and the benefits had been impossible to argue as they entered their careers. Even living in a global city, there was no substitute for actually getting out and seeing the world. 

It did add to her feeling that she’d done the right thing, coming to talk to him. If he was a recent addition to the city, much less the country, he might not have all the advantages of time and perspective. Or anyone to speak to, if he really was in a bad situation.

Her lips pursed at the thought. 

“How do you like our little store?”

Yakov glanced around the refurbished house that served as their neighborhood gathering place. At the clustered shelves with imported non-perishables and jars of local jams, the eclectic lighting dancing on the line between cozy and cluttered, the gleaming wood tables in the cafe with plush chairs. 

“It’s nice to have it so close by.”

“We fought to keep it like this. It just adds something to keep the feel of the neighborhood rather than some big chain,” Elaine told him, remembering herself. “Let me treat you to a coffee - a belated welcoming gift.”

He shook his head, retreating two steps back down the shelves from her offer.

“Thank you, but I only came to get the coffee. I need to get back to the house soon. I’d be missed.”

So _that_ was how it was. Elaine had suspected, from the quiet way he’d slipped into Wick’s large house across the way, Yakov’s quiet demeanor, but hearing it out loud made her tighten her lips around a warning about men who had _expectations_. 

“Then let me walk you out.”

Yakov eyed her, but Elaine remained firm. This was her store in her old neighborhood, and no young man would charm her out of listening to her better nature. When he eventually nodded, she didn’t even gloat. Just followed him to the counter and let him pay first, trusting him not to dart out the door while she was occupied with her pocketbook. 

“I have to tell you something,” she said as they neared the door. 

“Oh?”

She shook her head at the question and pressed forward. However much everyone else suspected, this wasn’t a conversation for other ears. When they stepped outside together, the bite in the air made her pull her wrap closer around her shoulders and despairing thoughts of preparations upcoming holiday season flit through her mind. How Yakov wasn’t shivering in his sweater, Elaine would never know.

Tucking her hands under her arms, she squinted into the wind. Somehow the decision to give fair warning to the young man was much easier when it was a hypothetical rather than staring her in the place. 

No time like the present.

“If you don’t know, then I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but…” her voice tightened, thinking of a grim reputation among the type of men Derek tried to steer clear of, and gunshots late at night. Yakov kept watching her, face open and friendly and concerned as she grappled for the right words. “How much do you know about Mr. Wick?”

“I know some,” he answered her, suddenly much more focused. “Why?”

He didn’t deserve to be caught up in trouble. At least not without knowing what he was getting into. Elaine reached out and held his arm, thankful that he let her. “I don’t mean to make you worry, but a few months ago the police were called to Mr. Wick’s house. Gunshots, in the middle of the night. It lasted a long time, kept everyone on the street up. An when we went by the next day, there was glass everywhere and John was gone. Came back a few days later and no one said anything, but we all knew. The police keep an eye out, but they say there’s nothing they can do.” 

A furrow was growing between his brows as he listened, and Elaine nodded again.

“That must have been frightening.”

“Oh, it was.” And it had been. They didn’t live in the type of place that guns were a normal thing. Maybe old hunting rifles, passed down family lines. Nothing like that. Elaine had called in a panicked report, only to be told that they’d send an officer to look into her noise complaint.

Yakov looked as serious as the conversation called for. Where he’d seemed to be in a hurry before, rushing to get home to whatever ‘expectations’ were waiting for him, he was completely still now.

“I didn’t realize the police had him under watch,” Yakov sounded troubled. 

Elaine grimaced, wishing that she wasn’t about to make it worse for him.

“Apparently they’ve been aware of him for a while, but there’s not much that they can do. That’s what I’ve been told, at least.” 

“And do you know why they’re… aware of him?” He asked, an odd arch to his voice. 

She tugged her wrap close around her shoulders, moved toward her car. Yakov moved with her, just a half step away. 

“I’m not usually a gossip.” The gunshots she’d heard. The rumors about Mr. Wick weren’t only unconfirmed, they were sure to sound crazy to anyone who hadn’t lived by him for years while odd events added up. 

Yakov shot out a hand, grabbed her by the wrist. And for a second, in the parking lot of her neighborhood store, talking with a well-mannered young man she was trying to do something good for, Elaine was unnerved. His grip was _strong._

“Please. This could mean my safety.”

He looked so earnest. She softened.

“There’s been rumors on the street. That he was involved with the mob, we think. No one really knows. Something bad, but the police aren’t any help. All they say is that they’re aware of him and not to worry.”

Yakov was very, very still. She tugged her wrist toward her, and without being able to put her finger on it, was relieved when he let her go without a fuss.

Elaine had done what she set out to do. What she’d meant to do the first time around. She offered him another smile, aiming for reassuring but sure it came out wan. “Just be careful, dear. Our doors are always open. And it might really be nothing.”

Yakov nodded, got her door with her as she swung her bags into the passengers’ seat. Perfectly polite. And as Elaine pulled out of the parking lot, he was still standing there, watching her drive away. Slim and pale and hopefully some measure safer for the warning she’d been able to give him.

* * *

Yassen entered the house moving slow and carefully, temper pressing cold static behind his eyes and sending electric currents of rage shivering across his skin. He was truly, deeply thankful that John was out with Dog on errands.

Retirement hadn’t improved his reaction to being surprised.

Certainly not when one of the neighbors he’d politely avoided for months approached him at the corner store to offer ominous advice. Elaine Miller had offered him useful information, though undoubtedly not how she’d meant to. 

He hadn’t been aware that Wick’s past was quite so well-known.

Yassen refused to pace the hallways of the house like a nervous recruit, no matter the energy that had knotted in his chest.

He needed something to do with his hands. 

It wasn't the first time the impulse toward action had hit him, in moments of stress or boredom. The desire to do _something_ and once again he was glad for the routine he had inadvertently begun over a pot of hot oats. It would have been so simple to pull his anger, press it down inside him until he was a coil of violent anticipation. 

Productivity was better. Or at least it would be, once he calmed down.

Tossing the coffee - the _damn_ coffee - onto the counter without really caring if it burst, he kept pushing forward. Yassen swung open the fridge and stared inside, more for something to do than real need to see what he had stocked. The contents of the kitchen were easy to memorize, and Yassen enjoyed the certainty that came with knowing what he had on hand at any given time when he went to cook.

Over the past months John had gone beyond his original promise of picking up the groceries for the house, and instead took to bringing back any ingredients Yassen had the mind to ask for, and on more than one occasion some that he hadn't. Just last week John had handed century eggs, wrapped in linen and still covered in chaff, to him with the barest smile in his eye. Another time it was cubed alligator meat. Not meant as a challenge, not exactly. There wasn't any doubt that whatever he brought home would be eaten - Yassen had a suspicion that they had both gone too hungry too young for that. Instead it had smacked of very slight playfulness.

Roundabout interaction as they sorted out suddenly more flexible boundaries between each other.

And, well. Yassen usually enjoyed those chances to experiment.

Right now Yassen was in no mood to play with unusual foods. Unfairly, even the memory of John’s consideration grated against him. He needed something reliable, to keep him busy while he thought through the implications of what he had just learned.

What the neighbor had casually dropped on him, in a scathing indictment of his own attention to detail. Of John’s omission with him about something that should have been obvious.

Or worse, that Yassen had expected him to be honest.

Pulling the ingredients out of the fridge, he set a large pot to boil and began basic prep, paring purple sweet potatoes with a wickedly sharp knife smaller than his little finger, watching the skin raise into long curls and fall into the sink, distantly and distinctly unhappy with everything.

No, he hadn’t known that John had been visited by the police when Tarasov pulled him violently out of retirement. Or that there were rumors floating around this upper-crust street about his work. 

That felt distinctly like an oversight, now. The type of mistake that he would have taken out of a subordinate's skin.

He finished peeling one of the potatoes and set it aside, collected the skins into the bin for compost and reached for the next one. He was trying to take a step back from the tide of his bad temper, to consider next steps logically. 

The neat math of safety ran through his mind on automatic: less than thirty minutes to leave the house, an hour to slip across the bridge into New York City and the millions of people there. Three days to lay low and begin next steps. Leaving wasn’t a permanent solution to starting retirement over, but it would allow him time to regroup. To see if tempers from his half-defection from SCORPIA had died down in the months since he left. 

Yassen didn’t bother to pay attention to what his hands were doing, knife twisting on automatic as he tried to marshall his thoughts into order and stamp out the niggling hope that his planning for a worst case scenario might be an overreaction.

Next best option was waiting for John to get home, thanking him for his time and company, and going on his way with no bad blood. It wouldn’t be running, might not even be unexpected. It still didn’t settle him into the sense of purpose he wanted.

Yassen wasn’t indecisive by nature. Considered, patient, or even wariness were all traits that he would admit to. But he thrived on having a course of action. Being aimlessly distressed wasn’t only unpleasant, it was unlike him.

Maybe it was because even with all the rationale in the world telling him to retreat undercover, politely or not, it was easy to make arguments for why he should stay.

There were practical reasons that he shouldn’t be concerned, if he thought about it. Local police weren’t the largest issue threat, given their limited information and enforcement ability.

There were no good photos of ‘Cossack’ in any database that he knew of. He’d been careful and though his reputation in certain circles was daunting, his value was in his ability to remain a ghost. No past, no confirmed real name, no record. It had let him take on any number of nasty jobs over the years, the kind he doubted any government would turn a blind eye toward. Even Italy had been hard-pressed to justify allowing SCORPIA to roost so closely after some of those last jobs, and they had grown used to the commerce of crime through a long history with the camorra.

Yassen had guarded his identity well throughout his career. Any hope of surviving retirement depended on it.

For John, under the High Table and figure of universal notoriety, that anonymity wasn’t an option. Even years ago, still getting his feet under him in his own career, Baba Yaga was a name to be feared. One of the people who defined their line of work. His reputation had only grown over the years, not least because he pulled himself out at the height of his career.

It was why Yassen had landed here in the first place. Hiding under John’s admittedly very impressive shadow until he knew what he was doing, aside from avoiding old employers bearing grudges. 

He just hadn’t expected that that notoriety carried over into civilian population around them. No doubt some well connected client in the city that didn’t have enough sense to keep their tongue in their head about hiring Wick when they were speaking to their friends.

That type seemed to always have friends.

Yassen pulled a face at the food in front of him. 

The potatoes, the cubes of meat coming to temperature and the pot that he’d forgotten to salt on the stove. The spice rack that he’d sorted through over the past weeks to arrange to his preferences.  Actions and signs of familiarity.

He _should_ have been packing the few belongings he kept in his room to slip out the front door and back to safe obscurity. 

Even though law enforcement was a minimal threat compared to the enemies he’d made in his career, with the new information about just how close they were likely to come, he felt exposed and on-edge for the first time in weeks. Aware of his every movement and the lines of sight into the room. How far he was from his weapons, still kept close despite the way it made Wick’s face tighten.

He’d made his choice to set his guns away, but he’d never asked Yassen to do the same.

It would have been within his rights as his host, who had offered to help him without the expectation of a payment in return. As someone Yassen wanted to stay on good terms with and had a healthy respect for, besides. If John had asked him to disarm himself, Yassen would have reluctantly obliged. Instead, over the past months, he slipped gradually from staying armed, to leaving his weapon in his room. Keeping at hand if needed but otherwise set aside for the first time he could remember. What was worse was that Yassen couldn’t name when he’d made the decision to let caution fade into easy alertness. Not unaware of risk, but not anticipating it either.

Without noticing when, he had started to feel safe here. Let go of his reservations and eased into the rhythm of life under Wick’s roof. 

If he was forced to be honest, it was part of why the thought that John had kept information about his security back from him rattled him so much.

It should never have happened. He’d worked jobs longer than he’d lived here and left them successful and able to account for every minute of that time. None of this uncertainty about how the days had slipped by.

The paring knife was wiped on the towel thrown over his shoulder and set aside in favor of a larger blade, chopping the potatoes into rough chunks for the pot. 

If he was going to leave Wick, this was as good a push as he was going to get. Not running, not admitting that he was unable to withstand the persistent proximity of another person, but a reasoned response to changing information. 

It seemed oddly anticlimactic. Somehow he’d thought that there would be a breaking point between the two of them, or some internal precipice that he tripped over as he grew used to retirement that told him he was ready to return to traveling and solitude.

Yassen stood there for a long time, skin tightening from the heat of the boiling pot, staring at the roiling water.

It shouldn’t have been a debate at all. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a conversation that needed to be had. This might not be quite that, but there were things that needed to be said. And then, more importantly, not said at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it wasn't quite as quickly as I was hoping, but it IS still October. Thank you so much to everyone who has commented and read - it means the world. We're nearing the home stretch now. Apologies for the very long chapter - hopefully they're better at getting to the point in the future.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising that Yassen preferred music to be on while he cooked, but it had become a constant presence in his home. Every time John returned to music spilling from the speakers he was struck by the peace of the moment. Always classical Different from what he’d expected from someone over a decade younger than him, but Yassen could be surprisingly old fashioned. More than once he’d raised a judgemental brow at John’s mustang, being carefully repaired under the distant guidance of Aurelio. 

Some afternoons when John had his hands in her guts and his own music on, more for noise than because he cared what he was listening to, Yassen came to the garage and watched him, arms crossed and leaning against the wall. He was too polite to say things like ‘flashy’ or ‘peacocking’, but John could read the judgement in his face just fine. At the extravagance of the car, that caught attention and held it. Thinking that it was more trouble than it was worth. Personally, John was sure that once it was fixed up and he could get Yassen in the car the man would change his tune, even if he’d rather eat glass than admit it. 

Gregorovich liked flying. No way he wouldn’t enjoy the speed.

But typically Yassen seemed content to rest, so close on the heels of his messy departure from SCORPIA.

John didn’t blame him. And it was interesting to see the live-wire energy slowly ease from his shoulders, how he’d slowly expanded into the space of the house. Leaving his room more often, indulging John’s desire for company first over breakfast and newly, late dinners as well. He kept his possessions light, the habits of a lifetime spent on the run hard to break, but he’d made his presence unmistakable in other ways. In company and food and music.

This hadn’t been what John intended, when he’d first extended the offer to Yassen to stay with him. Not lazy evening conversations or shared meals or splitting Dog’s attention in the morning: after sleeping with John all night, Dog abandoned him to linger underfoot in the kitchen, glued to Yassen’s side now that he was no longer banishing himself to the guest room after his morning run. Out of everything that had changed over the past months, John had expected that to sting the most. Dog was _his_ , but watching Yassen try to step around sixty five pounds of canine determined to love him was funny enough to outweigh the twist of possessiveness that came from having few things to stake a claim on through a hard life.

Working under the Table meant knowing that nothing you had was permanent, not when it could be used to tie you down. To hurt you.

Helen. Daisy. Even his car, which he’d poured time and care into until he knew every part of it all over. 

And even though it ached, on the other side of loss, John would admit that Helen had been right. She usually was.

She’d told him to find peace. He was trying.

It helped to know there was someone else trying too. Hard for John to feel alone when the kitchen smelled warm and lived in for the first time in years, or light music welcomed him home. Small, fragile habits built over months living together, and only a few of those on good terms. John knew enough of pain to treasure any happiness he was afforded. 

So when John got home from the vet with Dog, and opened the garage door into the kitchen only to be greeted by silence except for the low pop of oil in the pan and the bubbling of a pot on the stove, the silence felt like a warning.

It wasn’t only the lack of music. Yassen preferred listening to it, but he was quiet by nature. Something else about te scene itched at John’s more basic instincts, prickling wariness behind down his spine. 

He stopped in his tracks, ignored Dog’s indignant huffing behind him, and paused to asses.

Yassen stood by the stove, feeding the hot pan a stream of chopped meat and minced garlic, eyes half lidded in a way that looked deceptively calm and unfocused. If it were anyone else, John would have thought that they were oblivious to his presence. Never Yassen. The way he turned the heat down and capped the olive oil, all the movement carefully contained near his body and deliberate, would have given his awareness away even if the idea of him being snuck up on weren’t inconceivable. 

Yassen moved gracefully: the quick, neat movements of someone precisely aware of their body at all times. ‘Efficiency in movement’ was the term. 

It was a quality that John was most familiar with seeing on the job, rather than in his living room. It wasn’t the most comforting to coexist with, but over the past months Yassen’s habit of precise movement stopped alarming whatever animal instinct John used to keep safe. John had company who understood him. It was continuously surreal.

What was more, he knew that John was sure to understand him as well. Today, the shift from that natural control to exaggeratedly slow and obvious motion spoke of a dangerous person in a mood.

Not necessarily a bad one, but out of the ordinary. 

He still hadn’t looked at John. Back turned, by anyone else’s measure focused on the task at hand.

When Dog finally had enough of standing on the stoop and shoved past John, using his thick head like a very gentle battering ram, Yassen paused his cooking to crouch and greet him. Rubbing his hands on the towel over his shoulder before cradling Dog’s head in his hands. Dog was overjoyed. John was nervous.

“What happened?”

Yassen cocked his head, glancing towards John still in the doorway with clear eyes for a moment before turning back to Dog in an obvious dismissal. 

His tone, when he spoke, was similarly light. “I met Elaine. She grabbed me at the corner store to warn me about you. Specifically about your dangerous past and gunshots in the night,” he said. “And that the police came around frequently.” Yassen rubbed Dog’s ears, working his thumbs into the soft curl of fur beneath them. If he’d sounded angry, John could have taken steps to defuse his temper. But that didn’t seem right either.

Possibilities flicked through John’s mind, nothing quite fitting, not with the odd stillness and scathing self-control and that there was still a meal being cooked on the stove. And then between breaths, as John waited for all those separate parts to click together and make sense, it did. 

John didn’t go still at trouble. Hadn’t since he was young. Instead everything in his posture loosened, ready for movement if this went badly. Like rolling with a punch. “You’re leaving, then.”

It was just a guess. But it made sense. 

His first, wild, thought was that Yassen had reacted badly and killed the neighbor. But that was born from too years spent with too many people who enjoyed the power of being being violent and erratic. The younger man he’d come to know was neither of those things. Removing himself from a suddenly more precarious situation would be… more understandable.

“It seems wise,” Yassen said. “Given the new information.” At the edges of his voice, still carefully light, there was a hint of chill. Reproach for the lack of information.

Part of John wanted to balk at the critique. It hadn’t been malice. John hadn’t told him about the tense understanding that defined the last years living here or that the police were more than aware of his presence not out of arrogance but because he’d hardly been in a place to explain anything, months ago. Out of everything that he’d been mired in, the exposure he lived his life under had been the furthest from his mind by the time Cossack had appeared on his step, asking for advice.

Throughout his career, his affiliation with the Continental and the High Table meant that as long as he wasn’t obvious about his work around civilians, avoided taking contracts on certain targets, and abided by the rules Winston was so fond of, he was largely untouchable. The police didn’t like knowing he was in the area, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. And civilians were bound to talk, but talk had always been harmless as long as they didn’t say anything that distressed Helen.

The risk had been acceptable. Maybe John would have never been part of the neighborhood, but he had bought enough protection to live a normal life if he chose.

Yassen’s situation was… different. 

If he’d been the type to argue, he’d have argued that Yassen was still safe here, that he could stay without worry - he might not have the same protection from the law that John did, but there was very little to connect him to ‘Cossack’. The type of people he worked for paid for that anonymity as well. 

But all of that was common math, what he was sure Yassen knew. So John didn’t bother trying to convince him.

He walked over to the stove, peered into the pot. There were chunks of bright purple potatoes bobbing in the water, looking absurdly cheerful for the way that the kitchen was resting on eggshells at the moment. John hadn’t even known there were such a thing when Yassen had put them on the list last week, which got him a sparse explanation that they were technically yams. 

“You’re cooking?”

Yassen uncoiled back to his full height, turning on the sink to scrub his hands clean and ignoring the piteous whine of Dog at the lost attention. 

“Mashed sweet potato and chile braised beef tips. I had bone stock left over.”

That explained the spice in the air. It didn’t do anything to ease John’s confusion. He waited for Yassen to say… something. There was clearly something that was bothering him, maybe not on the tip of his tongue but certainly lodged in his chest. 

John didn’t mind giving him time if that was what he needed.

He might not have the bone-deep patience that Marcus had had, that he saw in Yassen, but he could wait.

John wasn’t so useless in the kitchen that he couldn’t stir a pot. Besides, Yassen seemed occupied with the pan of meat and livid red pepper in front of him, heat turned back up to high, turning the browning meat as it began to sputter. John poked a rogue potato back into the water where it was clinging to the side of the pot and watched Yassen from the corner of his eye. He already looked more like himself than when John had first arrived home. Still, with long lashes casting slight shadows as he kept his gaze fixed on his task. Tiny expressions flickering over his face as he considered whatever was on his mind. They suited him more naturally than the exaggerated ease he’d pulled over him before. 

It wasn’t until the meat had cooked through and been set aside on a plate to rest that Yassen spoke again, sounding raw.

“I didn’t want to run. I might leave, but you deserved to know.”

John could picture it. He couldn’t help but to. Coming home to not just silence but emptiness, not wondering after Yassen until it got late, the next day finding his things gone. By then he would have been vanished near completely.

“Thank you,” he said. 

It came out more seriously than he’d meant it to, and the reaction to his tone from Yassen was immediate - eyes flashing to him and not letting up when John met his stare. He wasn’t going to back down from that gratitude. Coming home and finding Yassen gone completely would have disturbed him.

A deliberate tilt of the head prompted him to continue. For someone who had a reputation for being inscrutable, Yassen got his point across very well.

John stirred the pot again, trying to grapple with how to say what he meant. That he was glad that Yassen wasn’t gone, but that he wouldn’t try to keep him. That it hadn’t been malicious. Just an accident of two different worlds colliding wrong.

“You’re free to leave whenever you want.”

Yassen stilled for a moment, poised on some unlikely revelation, then moved away. “I know.”

And for the moment, that seemed to be all there was to say. It wasn’t a guarantee that he would stay, but it was far from the immediate farewell John had braced for like an unexpected blow.

The only thing Yassen said after that was that the potatoes should be drained and set aside to cool and that the sauce still needed to be made, but that could wait until it was closer to dinner. He’d started the meal earlier than he ever did. 

It was the type of thing John wouldn’t ever comment on, but he suspected that Yassen took to cooking for the same reason he liked working on his car. Keeping occupied while being useful. It wouldn’t surprise him to find that Yassen began cooking specifically to have something to stop him from leaving in a fit of self-preservation. 

“We should talk once I’m done here,” Yassen said, edging between John and the counter. 

John took the pointed hint and got out of his way, moving to the living room. Amused in spite of himself and the air of grim anticipation still lingering between them. That he’d managed to find someone even quieter than he was.

His friends, for a certain use of the word, had always been the talkative ones. Sofia never met an argument that she didn’t love, and Marcus would have chatted up a brick wall for information if he’d thought it would help. The less said about Winston’s conversational habits, the better. 

Years ago, John had been pulled into the tide of their relationships, settling into the odd friendships that sprang up in their line of work. He wouldn’t call himself social, but he liked having people around. He knew most people in his line of work, tried to stay on good terms with them. Even while hunting, it was just business. He’d liked people that he’d had to put down, and before he retired he’d hoped that whoever took him out was at least fond of him too. Grappling with that was worth not being completely alone. It was too soon to say if Yassen felt the same way, but part of him suspected that he did. Anyone who actually wanted to live alone wouldn’t have tried for months to make this work. 

If the man didn’t leave now, when he had every excuse in the world to, it seemed likely that he would stay. In John’s home, quiet but slowly becoming less so.

John hadn’t realized how much the thought of that appealed until he considered going back to solitude.

He sat, and watched the light shift across the wall, and thought about how inconvenient it was to trip backwards into realizations about yourself.

Eventually soft music began to play. The radio, on the classical station. What he recognized as the usual for Yassen. Nothing John recognized.

Yassen slipped in to join him, looking more settled in his skin than he had all day, rolling his sleeves back down from where he’d pushed them up to keep clear of the food. “I shouldn’t have started so early,” he said, settling into his chair. 

“We could always eat sooner.”

That earned him a dry look that John wasn’t sure he’d earned. It hadn’t been meant to pacify Yassen. Months later, he still wasn’t sure of when Yassen slept, only that he spread the activities of his day wide. They usually ate closer to nine and while John didn’t mind the late meals, it wouldn’t hurt to eat before the sun was firmly down.

Yassen sighed, rocked his head back against the plush cushion of his chair. Only the middle of the day but clearly he was already ready for the next one. From their conversation, John couldn’t blame him. He also couldn’t stop from staring at the long line of Yassen’s neck, tilted back and bisected with a dull red scar. It made him look fragile. An illusion of posture and fatigue, but it was odd to see.

“Your reputation puts me at risk,” Yassen said eventually.

“Yes.” John couldn’t argue with him. 

It might have been minimal, there might be ways around the danger and good odds that they could manage the additional risk he took by staying here, but it was a reality. Eventually, someone would figure out that his guest was Yassen Gregorovich rather than Yakov, the identity Yassen had settled on for reasons John still hadn’t been told. 

And what happened after that depended on how understanding that someday-person would be. 

John wasn’t enough of a fool to hope for a good outcome.

Part of him, low and dark and angry in the back of his mind, wanted to lean forward and promise Yassen that it would never be a problem, that between the two of them any threat would be left ripped open and bleeding and _gone_. And that if Yassen wanted to retire, to never fire the gun he kept in his room again, then John would do the hunting for him.

But he didn’t want to be that person any more. He was trying not to be. And so he kept his grim promises behind his teeth and let the truth sit.

Eventually John stirred, rubbed a hand over the bristle of his beard. The longer they sat there, the more the protective outrage was fading into something uncomfortably like shame. “I should have remembered. And warned you.”

Yassen rocked forward, propped his elbow on the arm of the chair to stare at John. More than a little recriminating. 

“It would have been preferable to finding out from Elaine.” 

John pinched his eyes closed. She’d never liked him in the first place, for all that she’d plainly adored having Helen as a neighbor. Being reassuring wasn’t a strength of his, and he’d been too raw off the job to try very hard in those first years. By the time that John was more settled, it had been too late to manage his reputation on the street.

“Does she suspect anything?”

“About me?” Suddenly, Yassen sounded amused. More than he had all day. John, having long since picked up that Yassen loved nothing more than watching other people be uncomfortable, peered at him suspiciously.

Yassen, studiously blank, replied. “She thinks that you lured in a nice younger man in with money and charisma to warm your bed after becoming a widower.” 

Of course she did.

John pressed his face into his hand and tried not to laugh. Suspicions of a midlife crisis barely registered as important in comparison to the theories about his work, but still. If he’d had time to consider the different ways that a conversation between his neighbor and Yassen might go, implying that he was being taken advantage of wasn’t... preferable. Despite his natural reserve, there was plenty of pride there.

“It’s not the _worst_ cover,” John started, then cut himself off as Yassen began to chuckle. Soft and quiet, but distinctly real. 

“No, it’s not.” 

John had been thinking of practicalities: that the rumor was intriguing enough to spread quickly, a convenient fiction for why Yassen avoided the neighbors, plausible for both their respective ages and the demographics of the neighborhood. From the arch of Yassen’s brows, he was still enjoying the joke at John’s expense instead.

Good to know his mood hadn’t been completely ruined. The thought was only a little sour.

“What else did you discuss with her?”

“My past, some. She made ominous statements about your reputation and that the police refused to do anything about you.”

John considered the past years, the tremor in Jimmy’s voice when he knocked on the door late at night. “That’s not technically true.”

It wasn’t so much a refusal on their part as that they were bound by certain agreements and rules, like any other institution that dealt with the Table. John liked to think he’d earned a little good will over the years from the local cops, if it hadn’t burnt up with Tarasov. 

Yassen nodded, the last glint of humor fading from his face at the reminder.

Their impasse from earlier returned. Yassen didn’t want to leave, John believed that much. But he was here for safety, and that had been shaken. 

The music flipped back on, returning after a commercial break that had faded into the background of the conversation. Rachmaninoff. The opening strains of _Swan Lake_ , unmistakable to anyone who had danced in the Soviet Union.

John paused. He hadn’t heard it in years. And maybe it was the circumstances of the day, stress wearing down on him, or maybe the earlier realization that he wanted Yassen to _stay_ , a sudden sharp urge beneath his ribs made him more volatile than he was willing to admit. Whatever it was, the music echoed between his ears.

It reminded him of his childhood. Of being young, and always cold and hungry.

Maybe setting aside the subject of Yassen’s potential absence was for the best. At least for the moment. He might not be able to apologize for the misstep, those words wouldn’t come when he still felt he hadn’t done anything wrong, but he could offer something else. 

A way to show Yassen that this, whatever it was slowly becoming, meant something to him. That he wouldn’t have endangered it on purpose. 

John followed the notes for a minute, memories whirling through his head of agonizing leaps and trained precision. The confession came more easily than he would have guessed. 

“Most people don’t know this, but I used to dance. Ballet.” 

Yassen’s attention hadn’t wavered since he sat down, but John felt it sharpen at the change of subject. Personal confessions were hardly the norm in their house. John shrugged a shoulder, just a bit, suddenly embarrassed. This bit of personal history was hardly worth noting. From the way that Yassen leaned back into his chair, barely blinking, he didn’t seem to buy it.

“You danced to this?” Slow press for more information. That was something, at least. Yassen being a sparse conversationalist meant he wouldn’t have asked if he weren’t genuinely interested. 

Clearing his throat, John continued. “We were taken to the Bolshoi Theatre once. It's what everyone thinks of when they think of the Russian ballet, I know, but the Director sent some of the dancers there to watch. It was a way out for some of us and she wanted to keep us motivated."

If he concentrated, he could still picture that night. It was early in his training, and he had ached all over from the cane against his back and thighs and buttocks, limping up the stairs with the rest of the children. The older ballerinas, all of sixteen years old, had walked up the steps careful and tall, never letting on that they were bleeding inside their shoes from cracked and missing toenails. As a poor orphan from Belarus, the Bolshoi had been the finest building he had ever stepped foot in, stone pillars glowing with golden light while the floodlights on the stage bleached the dancers into surreal contrast with the inky shadow of the audience. He and the other students, plucked out of their classes by the Director for a glimpse at a better world, had clustered in a box just beside the stage, at an awful angle to watch the performance but close enough to see how perfectly the company dancers kept time with each other. Military precision. What Soviet dreams were made of, if you had the skill.

A month later he shattered a boy's jaw in the ring, and was slated for focused combat training instead. 

He clawed his way free of the Ruska Roma eventually. But it hadn't been onto the stage.

“I wasn’t a dancer for very long. For younger kids, they pulled us into both until you showed promise in one area or the other.” He’d gone back to the stage occasionally, filling this part or that when the Director wanted another male dancer. As with most things, Jardani had learned quickly and forgotten very little. But for the most part it had been the ring. “It was a simple system. If you were at the top of the class, you were given food and a bed and more attention from the Director’s people. The dancers - the girls, mostly - had it harder. They were kept thin on purpose. Plenty of us collapsed. But even in the ring you could hear the music playing on stage.”

To his credit, Yassen didn't try to offer sympathy for long-healed hurts. Just listened quietly until it was clear that John would speak no more. 

Sitting there, he didn’t even know if it was reluctance or base inability. Sometimes there was just nothing more to say. You did what you could and got used to the scraped out feeling when certain subjects reared their heads.

It hadn’t been much, but he’d wanted to offer something. 

When the song finised and there was no sign of further conversation, Yassen tapped a quick stacatto on the arm of the chair and began to speak. 

"I’ve never been inside the Bolshoi,” Yassen started, staggering John. To say that Yassen wasn’t prone to sharing details about his past was an almost violent understatement. "I spent a lot of time begging outside it, though. The regular visitors were rich, and tourists even richer." 

It made sense. Moscow in the nineties - and it must have been the nineties, for John’s rough estimate of the other man’s age to fit the arc of his career - was a hard place for children without a family or home. Yassen would have had to have been fast enough to avoid the authorities and young enough that it stirred the hearts and wallets of the upper crust. He was attractive as a man, with delicate features that made it easy to guess at the child he had been, hollow-cheeked and wide-eyed. 

The image ached, even though it wasn’t all that different from his own past. 

“You must have been good,” John said. To his credit, none of the sudden sympathy he felt had leached into his voice.

“I was,” Yassen replied without a hint of shame. Maybe he also felt the tug of an almost-shared past. One step differently, trading an orphanage and the streets, and it still wouldn’t have mattered one jot. They’d wound up in the same place either way.

John grimaced. He’d like to think there were better options out there for kids without families or luck, but stories like theirs were more common than not. And the neighbors wondered why he was so dour.

“Drink?” He offered, starting to stand.

“Thank you.”

John made his way to the bar along the far wall, poured himself a bourbon, more heavily than the usual. The conversation seemed to warrant it, and over the past months he’d given up on toeing his manners around Yassen. They hadn’t drank together much. Some wine over dinner, when time allowed. Yassen had never struck him as the type to drink socially, and if he imbibed alone, it was one of the things John didn’t yet know.

He had no clue if he even enjoyed bourbon, but poured him a generous glass of his favorite anyways. If he didn’t drink it then John would finish it off for him. 

When he returned, Yassen was folded neatly into the armchair, legs curled beneath him, sinking comfortably into the cushions rather than on the edge of his seat. He watched John come toward him with a frankness that said he was well-aware that staring was rude but didn’t care at all. When John handed him the glass, he took it with a murmur of thanks.

John settled back into his sprawl on the couch, glass propped on one leg. Yassen was still staring. John let him, looked away, scanning the room on idle habit. When he looked back, Yassen was nursing his drink, pale eyes still watching him. Hard to tell what he was thinking at the moment, but at least he seemed to be enjoying the drink.

“You like bourbon?”

Yassen paused with the glass to his lips. “It’s good quality. I like vodka.” He sounded a touch rueful, admitting to a stereotype. 

John snorted. “I could have gotten you some.” Good vodka even, even though he didn’t keep it in the house often. He tended to drink brown liquor. They hadn’t done any entertaining that would have required him to stock up. 

“I could have asked," Yassen replied. Hesitated, tilting his head to one side and pausing there. Unlike John, Yassen did go still at trouble. Coiled. 

And it was obvious what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. 

“I need to leave.” He said it steadily, no hesitation in his voice. Maybe a tinge of regret, as if it were an intrusion on the evening.

It wasn't, not really. After earlier, it wasn’t even a surprise. Made sense, given the information they had.

It still hurt. Like when you got tossed and saw the ground coming and had to go loose to absorb the shock. Not to stop the pain, but so that you could pick back up again. 

John nodded, not quite up for looking at him. The late fall sun really was something in the afternoon. It pressed his walls into richer colors than the paint alone could account for. 

“I thought so. Now, or-”

“In the morning,” Yassen answered the question before he’d quite finished speaking.Looking a little surprised at his own eagerness, he continued. “I don’t have much to pack. Dinner would be… nice to have together.” 

Yeah. It would be. His cooking always was. That slight pain in his chest came again, slow and insistent under his ribs. 

“Thanks for cooking,” John murmured. Just for something to say into the new, uncomfortable silence. He hadn’t thanked Yassen for cooking in weeks - it was just the pattern they’d fallen into. Told him what he liked, offered to go to the store, scavenged ingredients that were more teasing than serious and swallowed back a smile when Yassen never blinked at the challenge.

Yassen twitched. Minutely, so much that John almost wouldn’t have noticed if it had been anyone else. Recoiling from the distance in the polite commentary. 

He looked a bit lost.

And for all that John wanted to help, had offered to get him back on his feet and steer him through retirement and now found himself hungry to keep his quiet company, John felt more than a little lost too. He hadn’t been prepared to lose Yassen, mostly because he hadn’t realized that there was anything there to miss.

Yassen tapped his fingers against the glass, neatly trimmed nails loud. He was not a man prone to fidgeting, or trying to fill the space with aimless movement. Somehow, now, he looked more uncomfortable than he had all day. Not even the admission of his past had left him so off-balance.

“If I didn’t pack,” Yassen began. Broke off. _Tap tap tap._ “I need to travel light,” he explained, explaining nothing. 

That it was in blatant contradiction to what he’d just said, what John knew to be true, wasn’t really the point. 

It was John’s turn to stare. Intently, using every bit of his own knowledge of people and bodies and what they were saying when they choked on their words, trying to piece together the surprising amount he knew of Yassen on top of that image. Anything to quash the tiny unfurling of hope.

“You can come back,” John said. Casual. As level and calm as he’d ever been. As if it was of no importance. “If you’d like to, you could come back.” 

Yassen nodded, twice. Swallowed the expensive liquor he was probably only tolerating in two gulps that _had_ to burn and rose from his armchair in a graceful uncoiling of limbs that made it look as though he were the dancer of the two of them. 

John held out a hand.

And with a nearly invisible quirk of a smile, Yassen handed him his glass and slipped away, heading up the stairs.

John set down his own drink. He rolled Yassen’s glass between his palms. It was good crystal, heavy. The light refracted through the angles, lighting the last stubborn pool of bourbon inside bright amber. The room felt too close, for all that it was suddenly empty. Too warm for the last days of autumn.

He raised the glass and drank.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written out of deep and persistent curiosity, and the desire to get it out of my brain.  
> Thanks!


End file.
